Content shock.
Mark Schaefer first predicted it over five years ago, in 2014.
The marketing industry should have taken it as a warning, and some of us did.
But not enough.
Instead of pacing ourselves (and our audiences) with content, we continued to run a metaphorical race for who could publish the most content with the highest word counts.
So content shock continued to get worse, both for marketers and the audiences we create content for.
Now we’re really in the thick of it, and we need to start dealing with the consequences.
“It” being content overwhelm, and wow, is it hard to wade through.
Have you ever…
- Felt creative burnout or writer’s block?
- Experienced regular burnout?
- Started to feel repetitive with your content?
That’s all thanks to content shock, marketing overwhelms, and the “more is better” approach to content that the content marketing industry’s been taking for the past decade.
If you’ve dealt with any of the items of the list above, you might already be on board with a more sustainable approach to content strategy.
But if you’re not yet convinced that more content isn’t better, allow me to persuade you.
Here are six reasons why more content isn’t better – and might, in fact, be worse.
1. Content Marketers Aren’t Immune to the Burnout Epidemic
We’re in the midst of a reckoning with Hustle Culture, a culture of work that glorifies endless productivity, overwork, and sacrifice more than health, balance, and boundaries.
In 2019, we started to see the beginning of the end of this mindset.
First, there was the viral millennial burnout BuzzFeed article. Not that burnout is unique to millennials.
Then, later in the year, the World Health Organization officially added workplace burnout to its International Classification of Diseases.
And all throughout the year, we began to see more discussions of burnout that were frankly long-overdue.
Marketers of all kinds – from in-house to agency-side, to self-employed – are joining the discussion.
In fact, Search Engine Journal has joined the conversation too, introducing a weekly self-care column where along with other marketers, I’ve talked about my own experience with burnout.
It’s clearly something tons of us is dealing with, so it’s past time we learn how to adapt the content marketing practices born from Hustle Culture to fit the upcoming era of balance.
2. All Strategies Have a Point of Diminishing Return
The second reason to start taking a “less is more” approach to content marketing is the economic principle of the Law of Diminishing Returns.
According to Investopedia, here’s what it means:
“The law of diminishing marginal returns states that, at some point, adding an additional factor of production results in smaller increases in output.”
So what does this mean for content marketing?
Well, that there’s a ceiling to how much impact you can make with a given content strategy, no matter how frequently you’re implementing on it by publishing new content.
There are only so many people you can reach just by increasing your amount of content without addressing other, more important aspects of your strategy, such as:
- Content quality.
- Customer journey targeting.
- Lead nurturing.
- Conversion.
At some point, you’ll have created all the content you need, and your time will be better spent marketing that content than creating more.
3. Unneeded Content Generates Bad Leads
At some point, you’ll have created “enough” content.
You will have covered all your bases. Created content about all the major touchpoints and talking points in your customer journey.
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